For 25 years, Tom Allison was a revenuer, a federal agent charged with enforcement of the nation’s laws on taxation of liquor. His territory was the hills, hollows and deep woods of Alabama, and his quarry was the illegal whiskey makers. Allison remembers the stake-outs in the brush, the undercover assignments, the long waits to catch the distillery operators red-handed, and, of course, the chases as he and his fellow treasury agents ran down fleeing moonshiners in the dark of night. While Allison is a natural story-teller, the characters who populate this history are too strange to be fiction. Perhaps the only thing more striking than the ignorance of many of the moonshiners is the craftiness of some others.

I grew up in Raleigh county in the state of West Virginia. When I look back to my childhood I realize how fortunate I was. This is what it was like.

" However, one day, the lid had not been secured as well as usual. The cows smelled the corn and nudged the lid off. When grandfather returned, before he got to the still, he found the cattle stark drunk, staggering all over the field, as a result of raiding the mash barrel...." I grew up in Raleigh county, in a little town called Beaver, in the state of West Virginia. I lived on a 100 acre farm in a family of ordinary means. When I look back to my childhood I realize how fortunbate I was to have clean air, clean water, vegetables from a thoroughly oganic garden, fresh cow's milk, butter, and buttermilk - fresh every day. We gave the hogs what was left from each day so we raised great pork. Recycling was a part of life, not something you had to work into your habit. Back then we didn't have thrift shops like the Goodwill, as we wore our clothes so long that they weren't fit for anyone else to wear. This is what it was like. Many times I return to this quiet time in memory, and relax my mind and body. -Pearl Todd Miller

A journey through Southern Appalachia to explore the complex messages food communicates about the region Depictions of Appalachian food culture and practices often romanticize people in the region as good, simple, and, often, white. These stereotypes are harmful to the actual people they are meant to describe as well as to those they exclude. In Hungry Roots: How Food Communicates Appalachia's Search for Resilience, Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre tell a more complicated story. The authors embark on a cultural tour through food and drinking establishments to investigate regional resilience in and through the plurality of traditions and communities that form the foodways of Southern Appalachia.

Moonshine is corn whiskey, traditionally made in improvised stills throughout the Appalachian South. While quality varied from one producer to another, the whiskey had one thing in common: It was illegal because the distiller refused to pay taxes to the US government. Many moonshiners were descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants who had fought in the original Whiskey Rebellion in the early 1790s. They brought their knowledge of distilling with them to America along with a profound sense of independence and a refusal to submit to government authority. Today many Southern states have relaxed their laws and now allow the legal production of moonshine—provided that taxes are paid. Yet many modern moonshiners retain deep links to their bootlegging heritage. Moonshine Nation is the story of moonshine’s history and origins alongside profiles of modern moonshiners—and a collection of drink recipes from each.